Computer aided flowsheet drawing—I

A computer aided methodology is presented for determining the positions of equipment symbols in a flowsheet given only the equipment connection information. A two pass logic is used. In the first pass the location of process sections is determined by reducing the process section level flowsheet and generating a mesh structure using a modification of Rubin's algorithm. The approximate dimensions of each section are determined using a depth first search, and, the locations of the process section centroids are selected heuristically. In the second pass, the equipment symbols are positioned within the sections taking into account external equipment connections to other process sections as well as the flow patterns within the section. An experimental program has been developed and some test examples are presented.